Jinshanling: The Best Great Wall of China Hike?

We had been in China for less than 24 hours, the moment we found ourselves high atop the Great Wall of China, giddy with happiness.

At somewhere between 3,800 and 5,500 miles in total, depending how you measure its parts, the Great Wall of China stretches longer than the entire border between the United States and Canada.

This fact not only boggles the mind, but it also makes it tough for a tourist to choose which part of the Wall to hike!

Nearly every hostel, hotel, and tour company here offers day hikes to different parts of the Great Wall that you can book just a day in advance.

The start of the hike at Jinshanling is smooth, but then…

Oh, how we debated which Wall section to select!

Badaling is a close drive from Beijing and is amply dramatic, but word is that it’s dense with tourists.

Mutianyu is also relatively near Beijing, and friends who recently visited got wonderful photos… but a French tourist in our dorm reported that this section was “boring” compared to the others. (A part of the Great Wall, “boring”?!)

Jinshanling is around three hours from Beijing by tour bus (which would leave from our hostel at 6:15am and get back past dinner!) and is a notoriously difficult and long hike… but it is rumored to be the best of all the popular Great Wall sections because of its visual drama. The tour blurb on the wall of the hostel read: “This is extremely tiring day, but you will never be disappointed!”

The path gets crazy steep! See Colin’s face below.

Which to pick? Which to pick?

At last, Gareth and I asked Colin for his clear-eyed male opinion. Clarity was instant when Colin responded: “Which part of the Great Wall do I want to hike? I want to do the most awesome part, of course.”

Clear: Jinshanling! We paid the hostel tour booker and set our alarms for 5:45am.

At dawn, a tour bus scooped us up, along with tourists from hostels across the city. Trying to make us Westerners feel at home, the Chinese tour group fed us a breakfast of… (I kid you not) McDonald’s hamburgers and Coke.

(Colin gasped: “I thought I was weaning myself off vegetarianism all the months before this trip so that I could eat authentic Chinese food!”)

Despite the misguided and borderline repulsive breakfast, everyone on our bus was in a jolly mood. Not only were we headed to encounter one of the most phenomenal sights of our life, but also, our tour bus was blessedly air conditioned, and China in summer is HOT.

On the bus, Gareth and I caught up on all that had passed in her year with the Peace Corps in China and in my year back in America after a year of travel. Colin diligently did graduate school work for his Master’s in Teaching using a downloaded document on his Kindle e-Reader.

This Wall section is so steep, its sides point downward.

Partway through the three hour drive, a petite and spunky Chinese woman stood up in the aisle and introduced herself as our tour guide. We wouldn’t stay together as a group during the hike, she told us, because one had to be ridiculously fit to make it to the end and back in time (and she was sure few of us were, given our Western McDonalds-eating habits). Our guide would, however, give us some Great Wall facts to mull over before we touched it with our own feet.

Here are some Great Wall facts:

– The Wall was first made of rammed earth, stones, and wood, but in later periods, bricks and tiles were used, too, providing stronger defense.

– The Chinese began building walls to guard against invaders as early as the 8th century B.C. and each subsequent ruler added to, built, or neglected different parts of walls depending on the characteristics of his enemies of that particular era.

Colin’s Great Pose atop the Great Wall.

– When Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 B.C. he ordered the unification of all the little protective walls into one Great Wall. Some historians estimate that up to a million people died in the construction of this unified wall, and many a ghost story exists about the spirits that remain.

– The Wall was extended and expanded during the Ming dynasty of the 1300s to keep out the raiding Mongolian tribes to the north. As Gareth explains, “the Mongol tribes were nomadic and didn’t plant crops or practice farming, so they kept popping over the border, stealing food and other goodies from the Chinese, then sprinting back over to their home territory. The Wall helped stop that.”

Gareth did the whole hike holding a purple sun umbrella.

– Despite being held off for years by the Wall, the Manchu tribes finally surmounted the Wall in 1644, then promptly took over Beijing, then all of China, and established their Qing dynasty which ended the Ming era.

I’ve always pictured the folks who worked on the Wall shaking their fists in agony as the invaders entered, screaming, “All that work for nothing!!!”

Well, all that work on the Wall over thousands of years was NOT for nothing, it now turns out. Though the Wall was wanted to repel invaders, it now serves to attract outsiders… thus earning China countless tourist dollars. And tourists do NOT leave disappointed.

Guard towers are at regular intervals along the wall. Shade!

We arrived at the Great Wall and spilled out of the bus into the sweaty heat. Now, if YOU go, don’t forget to bring your sunscreen, hat, water (lots of water!) and, if you’re into fashionable Chinese lady style like Gareth, your sun umbrella. Preferably purple if you want to be as cool as Gareth.

Oh, and bring your own toilet paper if you’re hitting the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. The toilets are the classic China hole-in-the-ground squat toilets, and there was no TP except what we wisely packed in.

Our guide gathered us around a map at the base of a mountain which showed the Jinshaling section of the wall where we were.

“To go up the mountain to the Wall,” our guide said, “you can hike one hour, or you can take the cable car up in a few minutes and save your energy for the good part: the Wall.”

The cable car up to the Great Wall at Jinshanling.

“Yes, cable car!” Gareth, Colin, and I said immediately.

“When you arrive at the top,” the guide continued, “turn left. To the right is nothing special.”

I giggled profusely at this pronouncement of a part of the Great Wall of China as “nothing special.”

“We meet back here in four and a half hours for lunch,” said the guide. “If you are extremely fit, you can make it to the tower which is engraved with the names of Chinese soldiers and return in time to eat and get on the bus.”

We eyed each other suspiciously, wondering which of us was extremely fit, or not.

I love those jagged mountains in the background!

And then we were off to the cable car and up the mountain to the Wall!

What a thrill! What wonder! What a workout!

You can see from these photos that the hiking at Jinshanling starts out smooth and restored… but then gets steeper and steeper and rougher and rougher as it nears Simatai. The Simatai section is so wild and unkempt, in fact, that a number of tourists recently perished by tumbling off its crumbling ramparts. Luckily, we knew we’d never make it to that risk zone, as one would need to be a superpowered robot to cover that amount of distance in the time we had.

Tired hiking? Imagine BUILDING the Great Wall!

The minutes flew by as we strode, then climbed, then grappled along the wall. Tourists thinned out, chunks of rock slipped under our feet, and Gareth thanked me for forcing her to change from her flip flops to more sensible hardcore hiking shoes.

The regularly-spaced guard towers along the Wall provided blessed shade from the steamy heat and sun. What cracked us up (and then ended up keeping us from passing out from dehydration) was that each tower illegally housed local people who had snuck up the mountain to hawk beverages and T-shirts! What a career! Imagine, every day: “Have a nice day at work today, honey, climbing the Great Wall and selling Coke to dehydrated tourists!” Stuffed in the corner of some Great Wall towers we went through, we also noticed some grubby, balled-up sleeping bags and blankets. How often, we wondered, did the hawkers spend the night up here? Wow.

Colin had calculated our time before setting off along the Wall: we had to reach the Chinese soldier tower within two hours if we were going to make it back to the bus in time.

As we hiked on, the Wall became so crumbled that we were forced into a detour off the Wall and into thick green bushes that swirled sage and flower scents in with our heavy panting. We got back up onto the Wall after the detour and were awestruck by the mountains suddenly in view.

Each section of the Wall is different and exciting.

“Those are some Mongol mountains!” said Gareth. “You can tell they formed a border.”

I felt my first lust for a mountain range at that moment.

“You’d have thought those mountains would have been enough to keep out the invaders,” said Colin.

“Is this wall even tall enough to be effective?” I asked, sunstroke getting into my cerebrum. “I mean, like, if you had a horse, couldn’t you just hop over it?” Colin and Gareth yelled some sense into me, forced me to drink water, and we continued hiking.

The three of us spent a while muttering in awe about the sheer accomplishment of the millions of people who had created this wall that was so exhausting to walk for four hours, let alone build for centuries on end to the tune of 5,000-something miles. And the hubris of the emperors who ordered it done! And the honor of touching it ourselves, in the year 2011!

Just one more tower? Come on, let’s continue!

Ten more towers to reach… then five… then two… (We collapsed in the shade of each tower and gulped at our water, pouring sweat…) then we reached the soldier name tower!

Victorious, we chatted with the few tourists who had made the full trek, photographed the names in Chinese characters etched on the walls, and gazed longingly at the thousands of miles of Great Wall still in front of us.

“Just one more tower?” asked Colin.

“NO!” I gasped, clutching the wall for support and my rumbling tummy in hunger.

“Okay, fine,” Colin laughed, and our triumphant trio started the trek back the glorious two hour stretch from whence we’d come.

As our hike drew to a close and we neared the cable car to head back down the mountain, I looked at Colin and said: “Remember how we were worried it wouldn’t be worth it for you to come to China for just a week?”

Colin nodded.

Chinese Soldier names etched in the final tower walls.

“Well,” I said, smiling, “I think the entire cost of the flight, and all the stress of getting the China Tourist Visa and packing are officially worth it, just for this one day.”

“Absolutely,” said Colin, grinning.

And suddenly I re-remembered the power of travel to make twenty-four hours of our lives richer and more life-changing than three months of home routine.

Colin, Gareth, and I high-fived, blew the Great Wall a giant kiss, and climbed into the cable car to head away from the most astounding construction in human history.

The author, Lillie Marshall, is a National Board Certified Teacher of English who has written over 700 articles on Around the World "L" Travel Blog since 2009, becoming a respected source of advice on educational travel.. and creating joy in everyday life! Lillie launched Teaching Traveling in 2010, which is now one of the internet's most extensive communities of global education expertise. Lillie is mother to two young children, and has been a Boston educator since 2003.

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Comments

Great blog, thanks.
We went in November and it was very cold in the morning but warmed up nicely during the day to be comfortable in jeans and tee shirt. Pity we had to carry our jackets as we had a driver pick us up from the last tower which was five hours hike. It is amazing how different it looks in the opposite season. BTW, the cable car wasn’t working and didn’t look like it would any time soon. One of the high lights was that one of our team proposed to another member on top of one of the towers. Must have been inspired.

Hi,
I loved your article about the Great Wall. I’m heading to Beijing in August for a few days and plan on going to the Wall as well. I’ll be travelling alone and I’m not sure which section of the Wall to visit. I love hiking and really don’t love crowds so I think Badaling is out but after seeing your photos and reading about your experience at Jinshangling I feel it would be a good choice for me.
I was wondering what hostel you stayed at while in Beijing as it sounded simple to get a tour bus from the hostel to the Jinshanling part of the Wall and if you woud recommend I use that hostel if I am travelling alone. 🙂

Hi Jennifer! So exciting about your upcoming trip! At the end of the day, you can’t go wrong. Each section of The Great Wall is amazing in its own way! I did some searching but can’t manage to find the name of our hostel. All I remember was that it was in a historic Hutong and had a really remarkable covered courtyard. My guess is that many reputable hostels in Beijing would offer a bus tour of The Wall, though, so again — many good options. Have a wonderful time, and let us know how it goes!

I wouldn’t mind going back to a less traveled section of the wall. First time was Mutianyu (think it’s the closest to Beijing; at least closer than Badaling), which I thought was great once I got past the crowd that all stopped by the third signal tower. Badaling was the second time because it was easier for my parents, but it was far too crowded.

Well done ! You are so brave and adventurous! These are great pictures of the Great Wall! Which reminds me… I should go through my India pictures and post some. Having read this I thought it was rather informative. I appreciate you finding the time and energy to put this article together.

I once again find myself personally spending a significant amount of time both reading and leaving comments. But so what, it was still worth it!

Great website. I am a part-time librarian at a private high school. Several of our students come from China. My husband and I are going on a 8 day tour of Beijing and Shanghai in late November 2012. I would like to visit a library (school or public) and a bookstore when I’m there, but I don’t speak Chinese. Any ideas of how to connect with an English-speaking librarian ahead of our trip? I also want to add books and other materials about China to our school collection.
Any thoughts?

Ooo how exciting!!! Hmm… I’ve had good luck connecting with educators in other countries via the Global Education Conference website, http://www.globaleducationconference.com/ . There are a lot of other online communities of educators around the world, so in two such big cities I’m sure you can find your connection. Good luck and keep us posted!

Business in China is based on mutually beneficial relationships. There’s a good chance the tour guide’s daughter’s (or nephew or whoever) principal would gain ‘guanxi’ from having a professional bonfied USA Librarian visit their school. In exchange for meeting the staff you’d get a tour of the school. I recommend asking your tour guide, or hotel concierge, directly for what you want. Have you already?

It is I who must thank you. Your info on the GW is awesome, the pictures are fabulous and your story takes me through it as if I am there. Because of my really bad knees, I won’t be able to climb anything like this, but one day I hope to be able to get to the Wall and stand on it for myself! thanks again. Keep up the fabulous work. I too share lots of photos when I post because I think people like to see lots of pics.
Debbie

Just looking at your picture makes me want to climb the Great Wall Of China. I have never been there before but would love to one day. I have always wanted to go to China but I never got to, that looks like a cool place to Explore…

Just looking at those pictures make me want to climb the Great Wall of China now. I been to China before and it was really fun. One picture of the stairs makes me scared. The steps are all tilted and everything. It looks pretty scary. If I climbed that, I probably I would take a whole day to complete the whole thing. Once I step on the Great Wall of China, I probably be tired.

I went to one of those parts you stated. I just don’t know which one. My cousins, aunts, mom and grandma was so lazy that they only went up to the second watch tower ( I forced them). My grandma and Wenwen only got up to the slope where Chairman Mao’s saying was engraved onto a rock. The others went up to the second watch tower. I was probably the only one who was prepared so I left them in the dust. The Chinese was staring at me for wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt that said,” Being this cute is exchausting!” in English and were whispering about how I’m not Chinese. I know how to speak their language, but can’t write it and climbing up to the third watchtower was crazy. My aunts, cousins and mom looked at me in awe when I went back down with a certificate that stated I climbed the Great Wall of China. 😀 You’re so lucky to go to the dangerous parts! It’s beacuse of my family that I can’t go!

You are so lucky to climb that far in the great wall of china, for me I just climbed up the first staircase of the great wall of china and it started drizzling. My mom made me go back down and wait in the tour bus so I wouldn’t slip and fall. 🙁 I was so sad.

There r not only historicals but also natural landscapes in China. JiuZhaigou in Sichuan Province, on the list of World Natural Heritage of mankind, where the Chinese film “Hero” is shooted. If fond of mountain climbing, u can visit Huangshan in Anhui Province. If u like sea, just go to the Hainan Island, where the climate is amazing all the time.

Wow! Just…wow! First–amazing photos. Second–amazing experience! And third–what a great post! That last bit is SO TRUE! I must do this some day–and I never thought I’d want to go to China (though your most recent post may change my mind–I’m a little bit behind!)

Wonderfully written post. I love the pictures and all of the random factoids you provide. I’ve never had any real interest in the Great Wall experience, but your write-up might just have changed my mind.

Lillie, it is always great to read your articles! I have always told Gareth and her family that I am in awe in regards to the fact that not much gets past her when she travels. It appears to be the same with you! You, Gareth, and Colin seem to live in the moment and take it in for all it is worth. Reading your articles (and others in the past) with this perspective and from the perspective of one who has not traveled out of the US, I almost feel like I am there and sharing your experience. I hope the rest of your trip goes as well as this part!
Thanks for Sharing, Jim

What an epic post about your epic hike! I’m glad you took on the challenge to go to Jinshanling (ya gotta travel with no regrets!). Congrats on making it so far, and hope you keep making the most of your time in China.

And major props to Gareth for the classy umbrella – when I was in Southeast Asia, a brolly was the only thing that saved me from getting fried to a crisp 🙂

Yeah, the best way to paraphrase Colin’s sentiment: “I want to do the most awesome one” is “let’s travel with no regrets!” And… who knew delicate sun umbrellas could be used for manly men as well as dainty women! 🙂

Hooray! So glad it’s helpful. I have about 30 more China articles coming (including more of Beijing, an overnight train, Chongqing, Yunyang, and Shanghai), so stay tuned. Happy planning, and do be in touch!

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